Every day for a week, this doppelgänger messaged the student, asking about their day. A week before this new friendship developed and a week after it ended, the students confidentially disclosed how often they had engaged in delinquent acts in the past week. From these answers, the research team could calculate whether the new friendship had an effect on the students’ behavior.
Students who interacted with the aged version of themselves felt more connected to their future self, and also curtailed their misbehavior. They were less likely to do things they were not allowed to and would later regret. They reported drinking alcohol less often. They intentionally broke fewer things. Seeing themselves in the future increased their sense of a shared connection with the adult they would become, and as a result they chose more productive ways of engaging with the world. This decline in misdeeds was particularly remarkable in comparison to the other group. The students who interacted with an avatar of their current self reported more frequent delinquencies.
The sense of connection with a future self did more than just reduce adolescents’ misdeeds. College students on the brink of graduating who identified more with their future self reported procrastinating less often on their academic assignments compared to those who felt less connected. In another study, those connected to their future self were more disapproving of unethical negotiation tactics in business dealings, like trying to get a competitor fired, making concessions with no intention of honoring them, misrepresenting information to the competition, and bribing people to solicit insider information. In another study, almost three-quarters of future-oriented students were more likely to keep their professional commitments and attend meetings they’d agreed to; and among those who did, most were fair and honest even when at a financial cost to themselves. Indeed, future-connected individuals were two and a half times more likely to share information with another person, even when it meant receiving a smaller honorarium themselves for attending the session.
Narrowing In on Our Inspiration
In the mid-1950s in Montgomery, Alabama, public buses were segregated. When boarding, black people were required to pay at the front, leave the bus, and reenter through a separate door at the back. At all times, the ten front seats were reserved for white people and the ten back seats were reserved for black people. The sixteen seats in the middle were unreserved. Until the middle section was filled to capacity, white passengers sat in the seats front to back, and black passengers filled the seats from back to front. If additional black people boarded the bus, the law required them to stand. It was illegal for white people to sit in a row next to black people, so if additional white people boarded the bus, every black person in the row nearest the front had to stand in order to make a new row available for them.
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was sitting in the first row of the middle section, where she was legally allowed to sit. The rows in front of her were filled when one white man came on board. Parks did not vacate her seat when directed to by the driver. She was arrested and found guilty of violating a city ordinance to obey a bus driver’s seat assignments. She was fined ten dollars plus court costs of four dollars, and inspired a nation to rise up for civil rights.
The year 1956 saw nearly a full twelve months of Montgomery bus boycotts by almost forty thousand African Americans. They made up about three-quarters of the city bus customer and revenue base, and their actions crippled the economic structure of public transportation. Boycotters organized carpools. Those who owned cars volunteered to chauffeur others to work, back home, and around town. When the city pushed insurance companies to revoke the policies of those who used private vehicles in carpools, boycott leaders secured new policies with international companies. When black taxi drivers began charging riders just ten cents per trip, the equivalent of a bus fare, city officials ordered a fine be given to any cabbie who charged less than forty-five cents. Churches around the nation collected new shoes to replace the ones worn out by Montgomery’s black citizens who took to foot.
Retaliation was swift. Civil rights leaders’ homes and black Baptist churches were firebombed. Boycotters were assaulted. Ninety civil and community rights leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., were indicted for conspiracy to interfere with business. King went to jail.
That year also saw civil rights activist Alice Wine pen lyrics that would inspire a nation. Wine was a resident of Johns Island, South Carolina, and a graduate of one of the first voter-education schools that taught African Americans how to pass the tests counties required citizens to take in order to cast a ballot. She learned how to register to vote, and how to respond nonviolently if attacked at the ballot box. She participated in the struggle for all citizens to join America’s democracy. Wine wrote poems based on biblical verses and traditional folk tunes, and centered on issues of transcending oppression and persevering despite struggle and obstacles:
I got my hand on the gospel plow
Wouldn’t take nothing for my journey now
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on, hold on
Hold on, hold on
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on, hold on
These lyrics were sung in South Carolina. They were sung in Mississippi by Freedom Riders from Jackson to Parchman, and then on to Albany. They were heard on the national stage when both Mahalia Jackson and Duke Ellington performed them in separate shows at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. Alice Wine’s poetry would inspire those who continued to fight for justice in the years to come.
Her lyrics can also inspire us now, more than sixty years after their birth. Despite challenges and in the face of obstacles, we can stay focused. We can see a future that seems both far off and a part of our here and now. We can keep our eyes on the prize.
Plating a Full Plan
If you find yourself one weekend morning out to eat in London, or at the home of a culinarily inclined British friend, you could be squaring off against the full English breakfast. When you’re confronted with a plate of delicacies warmed usually by way of the fryer, etiquette encourages consumption of the sausage links, smashed potatoes, eggs, mushrooms, tomato wedges, baked beans, bread, and black pudding. An indulgence to say the least, but the thing about this fry-up is that if you drop any two or three of the ingredients, you’ve lost the essence of the meal. It winds up just being meat and potatoes. Or eggs and toast. You’ve not had the complete experience. And the meal hasn’t served its purpose, which is to make you full. Really full.
When we set out on a journey to accomplish something big, be it gastronomic or otherwise, the course we chart for ourselves is most effective if preparations are replete. Shipmasters don’t cross the sea by just putting a pin in the map to mark where they want to end up. No, instead they take into account all the factors that impact their voyage, like speed, winds, currents, tides, water depth, hazards, and landmarks, all in advance of setting sail. Chefs don’t conquer the behemoth task of plating the full English breakfast by simply laying a large serving dish on the counter. They do it by staging a mise en place that spans the full food pyramid. In the same way, we increase the odds of meeting our goal when we prepare for our journey in a full and complete way. We need to plan like we’re settling in for the full English breakfast.